Notice of Toll Violation - First Offense

After recieving what was absolutely not a Happy Birthday card in the mail from the Port Authority of NY and NJ, I did receive a happy little letter explaining that since I allegedly "passed through a Port Authority toll lane without payment of the applicable toll", I owed the state of New York 31 bucks. I decided to give the friendly customer service lady a call.

Me: Hi, I received a ticket for violating the EZ Pass lane and I don't own a car.

CSR Lady: Can you give me the ticket number?

Me: Sure! Blah-blah-blah.

CSR Lady: (tap, tap, tap, tap) Hmmmmmmm. Hm. (tap, tap, tap) Hmmmm. And your license plate number is Blah-ble-blay-blahblah?

Me: ....... (cricket) ......... No..... I don't own a car.

CSR Lady: Hmmm. (tap-t-t-t-tap-tap-tap!!) Hold on one second. (tap!, tap!, tap!) Hm. Yes, I'm going to have to turn this over to the DMV.

Me: Oh, riiiight. You certainly do.

Roaches de Cock

Since accusations are on the fly that I have exaggerated our infestation problem, let me clear the air. Eh-hem. OUR APARTMENT IS OVERRUN WITH GIANT, FLESH-EATING, FLYING, COCKROACHES. Never one to over-dramatize, I have toned this last statement down to highlight it's truth and accuracy. Let it be known that the author of the accusations has never once had to assassinate the damn things himself, oh no, it's all me Friends. All me.

Now, I know some of you mean well when you spout off cute little stories about the ONE time you saw a cockroach and killed it swiftly to be on your merry little urban way, and I appreciate that your experience was so painless. However, yours and my experience are very different. Very. I have killed oh, about 8 cockroaches in the 21 months of living in our apartment. All 8 were giant, about this -------------------------------------------- long. (100% not extrapolated.) To increase their specialness, several of them have flown at me at the exact moment I was trying to overpower them. Fantastic!

Others of you have suggested putting traps about the place. Hoho, he, hahaha. You naive, sad little children. I remember when I too had rainbows in my eyes and unicorns in my dreams... Let me paint the picture a tad bit more: they have been found in every room of the apartment, in different times of the year/day/atmospheric pressure, oblivious to the traps and sprays and gels and hand grenades that I have strategically fortified the house with. We do take the trash out every night, I have stored all of our cabinet foods in airtight containers, I try to clean over, under, and between every piece of furniture at least once a week, sometimes more.

Twice last year I called up Sally-Overreactor-Johnson (aka the landlady) to inquire about an exterminator and twice he came to spray. That's it. Just twice. Sally thought, "Surely we got every single itty bitty cockroach in the whole damn building in two applications! Yay us! High five." No high five, Sally, no high five at all.

I've thrown in the towel with the Roaches de Cock. They must really, really like that apartment. Well, I don't want to blight their happiness any longer. I'll just finish out my time in New York, and leave them in peace. Besides, there's no recourse. There's no hope. As my sister Gina said, "You can't kill them all, they survived the Holocaust!" Thanks Gin, I think you meant the nuclear bomb. Nice try, though.

Sigh, there's not even humor left in our apartment, the cockroaches snuffed it all out. It's a sad day in the nut house. Sad, sad, sad.

Maybe I'll have ice cream for dinner.

Warning: Hostile Post Ahead...

That's it. Enough. I can't take it any longer. I have to get this off my chest or I'm going to spontaneously combust.

To all of the inconsiderate pricks who hate dogs in my neighborhood:
I try to CURB MY DOG! but he doesn't always make it there, okay?! So get off it with your little xeroxed fliers taped all over your stupid little front fence and your stupid tree in front of your stupid little apartment. I have a geographical news flash for you, you live in NEW YORK CITY. If you've decided that you don't like people or dogs or people who own dogs, I've got the perfect moving company for you, dial: 1-800-movethef#@$out. They're very handy at maneuvering your stupid furniture down your stupid stairs. And. Don't sit on your steps every day and wait for someone with a dog to come within eyesight so you can start screaming incoherently that they have to CURB THEIR DOG. Because if I see you do that one more time, I'm going to call the ambulance right before I beat the living shit out of you. Then, I'm going to take my dog right up your front steps and have him pee his little heart out right on your front porch. Then I'm going to pee my little heart out all the way down your front steps, so there.

Oh, and to the nice little lady smoking her cig'y on her bottom step? Yeah, I'm pretty sure smelling a drop of urine on the sidewalk is more dangerous than those cancer sticks you're snorting into your lungs. Yep, you totally got me on that one.

{Deep breath}

People, it's urine. And, it's on the sidewalk. Near the curb. It washes off when it rains. Adjust your meds. You'll be fine.

Sincerely,
The Bitch with the dog.

Dear John, (Adirondack Issue)

Finally, I have the time to post some pics from our impromptu vacation to Lake Placid. Sadly, I couldn't snag a shot of the gator... We took this trip in lieu of our Alaskan Cruise after we spent some time in Ohio for G's grandmother's funeral. It ended up being one of my favorite trips we've ever taken and left us very relaxed and well-rested upon it's conclusion. I think it showed me most of all how easily our little family can enjoy time together, and how little planning and expense is needed to do so. We always talk about how great this time period in our lives is, before we have children, with two great jobs, healthy families, and an awesome little mutt to travel with us where ever we wander. Though I feel this time period drawing to its end, I can't help but be excited for the next one and the next and the next.

We made Hunter the lookout because A: He's got the best hearing this side of Planet Earth, and B: we wanted to try to steal as much Mother Nature as we could fit in our fanny packs.

Mmmm, yummy lake water. He was actually seizing with absolute ecstasy over how much time he got to spend hiking, swimming, sprinting, and chasing tennis balls. I felt like Santa on Christmas morning. Look! Water! And Land! And Exercise! I'm the best Santa ever.

I have to give this tree street cred (I am from Brooklyn after all) for persistence. I may have thought when presented with this giant immovable, solid blob of stone that perhaps I would choose to grow in the other direction, say where there was only soft mulch in my path. But no, not this guy, he said fuck you to this rock and I salute him for it. You go tree, it's your birthday.

I'm sorry, how can you NOT want to eat him? I think we successfully ran the living daylights out of Sir Valiant Hunter the Obstinate on our trip North. After an entire day of running and running and running, Forrest Gump style, we'd come back to our room and set up obstacle courses with the hotel room furniture for him to run through and over and under. I'm an idiot for not taking video of him doing this because we laughed until we peed and kept laughing until the guests down below us called to complain about their ceiling leaking yellow fluid.

We took a 13 mile canoe trip down the Saranac River with no guide or other people anywhere in sight. It was glorious. For about a quarter mile we watched a bald eagle follow our winding path down the mountain on the river. I think he might have been sizing Hunter up for lunch, but don't tell him that, he was all man out there on the water that day. It was actually the first time he actually went swimming. We stopped to take a break on a little shore, and truth be told to exercise our right to pee in nature, and as we returned to the canoe and pushed off, he decided he wasn't ready to go back in the boat and leaped over the edge into about 2 feet of water. Only he didn't realize the length of his legs was not greater than the distance between the surface of the water and the bottom of the river. He quickly surmised this was very interesting indeed and with the grace of a drowning cat, floundered his way back to shore. The rest of the trip was spent desperately trying to keep him in the canoe.


My shot as Pocahontas.

We signed up for a 3 hour horse back riding trail ride but when we got to the stables there was no one in sight. After waiting and then searching for about a half hour I finally found someone who told me to go find someone else to take us. I found the other person and she had no idea we were there for a trail ride and she had other stuff to do. However, these girls underestimate my pig-headedness and I have always been obsessed with horses, the Saddle Club Series, and anything equine, so I told her we would wait. About this time in the adventure is when G decides he doesn't want to go anymore and that we should leave. But he too underestimates my stubbornility (yes I frequently exercise my right to combine and make new words that describe my meaning) and so I tell him to shut it, we're waiting. I am so glad we did, the trails were breathtaking and the leaves had just started to turn into their fall colors. I took lots of pics out there. Here is us at a peak. The orchestry of this one picture took at least 20 minutes of horse maneuvering.


The last leg of our trip took us to the Olympic Bobsled Tracks which were surprisingly enrapturing. The minute we got near the track I began to feel this deep respect for the athletes that train their entire lives for a few days of competition among the most elite people in their field. As we toured up the mountainside and the guide gave us back history I blocked him out imagining the hours of training, the huge amounts of money spent, the sacrifices to family and friends that these Olympians had made. From the top of the track you can see the entire Bobsled and Luge Courses, the Olympic Ski Jumps off to your right, and Whiteface Mountain, site of the downhill skiing events in the far distance. It's unreal.

I truly loved every minute of this trip and left sleepy little Mirror Lake feeling somewhat sad to be breaking up with it so soon. My affair with the Adirondacks over morning coffee had only just begun and already it was over. Infatuation is sometimes so fleeting, and that is the thrill of it. We left before I could get annoyed at Adirondack for leaving his wet towel hanging on the bedpost. Oh the perfection.

Fulfillment

I'm on my 8th Hershey's Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate with Toffee & Almonds nugget right now and loving my 27th year on this great & beautiful earth.

If only I had an endless supply of coffee...

Don't Be Mad. Come On, Lovely.

Listen, I'm sorry for the recent non-postage of the mundane happenings of my life but the problem, you see, is not my fault. I've been excruciatingly subjected to the return of Crazy Talkative Anti-American French Lady since last week, and it's not going well. Oh the problems she gets into with her Windows XP! Let me tell you, I'm just about... Yep, I'm definitely tallying the "how much incarceration time I would face by throwing her out the window" with "my own sanity and happiness" pro/con list at the present moment. Will keep you updated on the outcome.

Just in case you haven't picked out the perfect color angora sweater for me, my birthday's Thursday so chipchop. There have been mysterious packages arriving a la casa mia for the last few weeks that I have been strictly instructed I am not to open. Which had to be instructed to me strictly because anytime anything whatsoever arrives at our apartment that does not resemble a bill or junk mail, I tear it open immediately regardless of who's name is written on it. Even when the addressee is someone I don't even know. Whoopsy. Let's just tape that sucker up and it's as good as new! This week has been especially difficult because every one of the packages is a different shape, size, and consistency. It's assaulting my senses, and my senses are sensitive. All of this has helped me actually get excited about the big sha-bang this year, which surprises me because I am usually apathetic (let it be known that I Freudianly typed empathetic on accident, or was it?) around my birthday. But I really am empathetic to people who are apathetic about their birthdays, too.

Dear Little Lost Camera,
I think about you often. I wonder if your new owner treats you nice. Do they always put you back in your little black case when they're done using you? Do they give you enough time to automatic focus before they take a picture? Are you being charged enough? How is Mr. Memory Card? Tell him I miss him too. Don't worry, I'm keeping your charger and docking station at home ready for you if you ever decide to return to me. Daddy wants me to throw it out and move on, but I'll never give up searching for you. He's a turd who has an xbox that's 10 years old anyway, so don't worry about him. Enjoy that big, wide world out there, Kiddo.
Love,
Mom

Game Schmame.

I'm shitting you not, this was in my inbox this morning:

"Ahhh, married bliss... what could be better? Well, what if he never left his dirty socks on the floor? (Or, what if she stopped asking if her butt looked big?)
What if you could erase your beloved's annoying habits with the touch of a button? Now you can with The Nest's new game: Marriage Invaders. Zap away quirks and shoot down vices! (And put that toilet seat down for good!)"

~~~Warning, hostile comments to follow~~~

I'm sorry but whoever came up with this game should be shot right now. Marriage, the game? Who in their right mind, except maybe anyone who had taken a vow of celibacy, actually nevermind those people, they're not in their right mind. What married person would want to play a game in which the object is to make your spouse stop doing all of the annoying things that they do? That's called LIFE people. If it were as easy as shooting bullets out of paper airplanes every woman in America would be buying stock in paper companies, me first!

Directions: Insert Foot in Mouth

We're out to dinner with an old friend of my husband's from his Michigan football days last night and I'm having some cocktails, of course. We transition from the bar to our table and begin a large work-related conversation about the finance world that both my husband and the old friend are a part of but to me is in another galaxy far, far away. Mr. G is all, blah-blah finance blah and I'm totally zoned out, obviously. As I patiently wait for a lull in the blah-ing, I'm thinking up some magnetic question that I can hit the old friend with to impress him with my conversational prowess. Finally, the moment arrives while Mr. G stuffs a bit of bread in his mouth and for the first time since we'd sat down pauses to take a breath. I jump at the chance and start right in immediately:

"So Ben, I'm a little late to this conversation, what exactly do you do?"

Sorry Charlie, his name is Eric. Better luck conversating next time. Tune in, it's sure to be a doozy.

Mrs. Wilson

I can't tell you exactly what made me remember this just now, but I want us to know all about each other's individual histories so as to build this relationship on a solid foundation so I think I should share it with you today, k? When I was 5 years old my two best friends were my parent's next door neighbors Mary Lou and her husband Ralph. Mary Lou and Ralph were nothing short of the most awesome people I knew at that time in my life. As an example of how utterly amazing they were, Mary Lou always saved her cereal box toys for me when she opened a new box. She quickly earned the category of Angelic Superhero in my book after that. Her kid was grown up, like 20! So she always saved certain things just for me to cherish.

At the time I had approximately 34 brothers and sisters, so I usually got lost in the jumbly circusry that was my parents own home. But every time I went to Mary Lou and Ralph's it was like I was the only kid in the world. They were about 50-ish years old and Ralph worked as an electrician out of his home while Mary Lou planted a giant garden in their backyard every summer. She would always take me up and down the rows scooping out little holes for the seeds and covering them up delicately before sprinkling water on each little pile. I loved every minute of it. All summer we'd pick our red ripe tomatoes, slice them up with salt and pepper, and gobble them up still warm from the sun's rays. And in the fall we would harvest our beautiful green peppers and laugh at how big the zucchini and pumpkins had grown.

I loved to ride on the tractor with Ralph as he zipped around the backyard mowing the horse field. I would totally forget I didn't live there until darkness fell and my mom would yell out for me to get home from next door.

Every so often Ralph and Lou-Lou's son would drop in for a visit. Needless to say, this did not go over very well with me. They were my friends, and I didn't want to share my cereal box toys or tractor rides with anyone. This animosity absolutely delighted the son, Kevin, to no end. He lived to see me get so worked up every time he showed up. He took to teasing me about anything he could think of just to get me riled up. It was all in good fun, of course, but he and Ralph and Mary Lou would just laugh and laugh at my retorts.

One time he came home and yelled out to me, "Hey Little Lady!" This was not my idea of a proper greeting for someone as sophisticated as myself so I refused to answer him back. "Hey there, Little Lady," Kevin tried again. Still nothing from me. "Well, what's wrong with you?" he asked. "Nothing," I replied, "but my name is not 'Little Lady'. It's...It's Mrs. Wilson".

There! I sure showed him. He better treat me like a grown woman now that my name is Mrs. Wilson. Well, I didn't know a Mrs. Wilson. I've never known a Mrs. Wilson. She was a complete fabrication of my own unwillingness to be teased anymore. But all my plans and strategy crumpled before my eyes. The three of them turned to make eye contact with each other, and it started. They laughed like there was no tomorrow. Big whooping laughs with tears streaming down their faces. I stared in disbelief. Well, if they were going to be nasty then I was going home! And in a flurry of soil and dirty sneakers I stalked back to my own yard. To this day, Kevin still calls me Mrs. Wilson.

Why Are They Called 'Quaker' Oats Anyway?

Here's the problem: I don't have a microwave to use at work. Number of times this annoys me in any given week: 4,567.5. My other problem is that I share an office with Crazy Talkative Anti-American French Lady, but thankfully she is only here about twice a week. So to delve into the foundation of my absent microwave problem we must first visit my dieting habits. I admittedly have terrible diet and exercising habits. It's embarrassing actually. The longest I've gone recently sticking to a healthy diet is a whopping two weeks, look out. And the longest exercising spree lasted one week. Count it, one. However, today happens to be a day that I am trying to diet, and as if I didn't have enough obstacles in my way to doing it, the microwave is adding fuel to the bushfire.

My *potential* first dieting day was supposed to start with a bowl of nutritious, somewhat lacking in deliciousness, oatmeal. I brought my Giant Mr. Quaker Cylinder to work with me today with it's own little measuring cup, intent on my goal. After morning rounds, I retrieved/stole a paper bowl from the cafe and returned to my office to make breakfast. Appropriate measurements were made, water was added and I struck off in search of a nearby nuker. First stop, my girlfriend's office down the hall: no one there. Maybe I'll wait a bit and try again... 30 minutes later, knock knock: still no one there. Shit. Take elevator 12 floors to lobby to use microwave in Cafe, this would have worked perfectly if the cafe EVEN HAD A MICROWAVE. Cafes without microwaves should be shot. Destination Three: Cafeteria. Surely, you think, the cafe-freaking-teria would have a public microwave. No? Holy Sweet Mother of Mercy.

I'm running out of ideas at this point and have been carrying my mushy cold oatmeal water around the entire freaking hospital. I return to my floor and try the girlfriend's office one final time: no one home. I'm about to break into tears when I glance into another office filled with busy-looking people and spot it.

Hallelujah on the highest, a microwave. I gingerly step into the flow of office traffic and beg the first person I see to use their joy-machine. I'm now 1 minute and 30 seconds to heaven and I can't even think straight. I scurry back to my desk to eat my treasure only to realize I want nothing more than to celebrate my victory with a giant piece of chocolate cheesecake. This diet isn't going so well.